PASCAL IN THE WORLD.
Pascal’s health, we have seen, was very delicate. His labours to perfect
his arithmetical machine had seriously impaired it. The attack of
partial paralysis, described by his niece, seems to have taken place in
the early summer of 1647. As soon as he was able, he removed to Paris,
where we find him settled with his younger sister in September of the
same year. It was on the twenty-fifth of this month that Jacqueline
writes from Paris of Descartes’s memorable visits. One of the motives of
his change of residence was no doubt to consult the best physicians of
the day; and Descartes, who, amongst his other numerous gifts, had some
skill in medicine, made his second visit to him partly as a physician.
“He came in part,” says Jacqueline, “to consult as to my brother’s
illness.” He appears to have given him very sound advice, which,
unfortunately, Pascal did not follow—“to lie in bed as much as he could,
and take strong soup.” On the contrary, he was “bled, bathed, and
purged,” after the usual medical routine of the time, apparently without
any good effects, or any alleviation of his sufferings.
The father also returned to Paris in May 1648. The Provincial
Parliament, with regained authority, had exacted the recall of the
Intendants appointed by the Court. Étienne Pascal’s services were
remunerated by the dignity of a Counsellor of State, and he was set at
liberty to rejoin his children. It was at this period that the struggle
took place betwixt father and daughter as to the latter’s determination
to choose a religious life. Encouraged by her brother after his access
of zeal at Rouen, Jacqueline was gradually more and more drawn towards
piety. After their settlement in Paris they went frequently together to
the Church of Port Royal de Paris, to listen to the sermons of M.
Singlin, whose touching pictures of the beauty and perfection of the
Christian life awoke in the youthful enthusiast the desire of entering
Port Royal. She opened personal communications with the sainted head of
the House, the Mère Angélique, and also with M. Singlin, who recognised
in her all the marks of a true vocation, but who would not allow her to
proceed further without her father’s consent and approval. The brother
at this time strongly sympathised with her aspirations, and favoured
them. On the father’s arrival in Paris, the design of his daughter was
imparted to him. He was greatly surprised and moved by the
proposition—pleased, on the one hand, by his daughter’s devotion, and yet
deeply wounded by the idea of parting with her. He took time for
consideration, and at length made up his mind that it was impossible to
give his consent. Not only so, but he strongly blamed his son, who had
broken the matter to him, for encouraging his sister’s design without
first ascertaining whether it would be agreeable to himself, and he seems
for the time to have felt so much distrust in them both, that he
instructed an old domestic, who had been with them from their youth, to
watch over their actions. This is the narrative of Madame Périer; {54a}
and the unpleasantness which arose out of this event appears also implied
in Jacqueline’s letter to her sister in the spring of the same year.
{54b}
In 1649 the Pascal family left Paris for Auvergne, and seem to have
remained there for about a year and a half. Madame Périer says nothing
of this visit, so far as her brother is concerned, beyond the fact that
he accompanied Jacqueline and her father. The likelihood, however, is,
that the visit was in some degree prompted by a regard for Pascal’s
health. He had made in Paris some progress towards recovery,
notwithstanding the severity of his treatment. But he was still far from
well, and it was judged necessary, “in order to re-establish him
entirely, that he should abandon every sort of mental occupation, and
seek, as much as he could, opportunities of amusing himself.” Her
brother, she adds, was very reluctant to take this advice, “because he
saw its danger.” At length, however, he yielded, “considering himself
obliged to do all he could to restore his health, and because he thought
that trivial amusements could not harm him. So he set himself on the
world.” When this definite change in Pascal’s life began is left
uncertain, but there are indications that he had largely abandoned his
studies in 1649 and the following year. During these years there is
nothing from his pen. The interval between the “recital” of the
experiments on the Puy de Dôme (1648), and his letter to M. Ribeyre, 12th
July 1651, is blank in any record of scientific or literary labour. This
is not conclusive, of course, that he was idle; but taken in connection
with the remarks of his sister, and the retirement to Auvergne, it
suggests that the family may have sought there, in rural isolation and
domestic reunion, the means of entirely withdrawing Pascal from his
severer studies, and the scientific companions who were constantly
prompting them in Paris. It may be, also, that the father sought the
means of withdrawing Jacqueline from the neighbourhood of Port Royal, and
from the equally exciting associations to her connected with that
neighbourhood.
Of Pascal’s life at this time in Auvergne we know nothing, or next to
nothing. There is, indeed, a single trace, of which the most has been
made, in the Memoirs of Fléchier, describing his stay at Clermont in 1665
and 1666, a few years after Pascal’s death. In these Memoirs, Fléchier
relates an anecdote of a young lady “who was the Sappho of the country,”
and greatly beloved by all the _beaux esprits_ of the time. Amongst
others, “M. Pascal, who had then acquired so much reputation, and another
_savant_, were continually with this _belle savante_.” It is difficult
to know what to make of this vague if piquant anecdote. Some of Pascal’s
more religious admirers have even been scandalised by it, and have tried
to show that it could not refer to the author of the ‘Pensées.’ M.
Cousin and other parties have emphasised it too much. {55} There seems
no reason to doubt that the anecdote relates to the younger Pascal—it
cannot reasonably be supposed to relate to his father. Nor is there any
ground to suppose that Pascal was less likely to be interested in a
beautiful and accomplished _demoiselle_ than any other young man of his
age. On the contrary, there is some reason to think him at this time
peculiarly susceptible to the charms of female companionship. The
passing glimpse which the story gives of his occupations in Auvergne, and
the comparative brightness and leisure in which it seems to set his life
for a little, are pleasing. It suggests the idea that the change to the
country had worked successfully, and that with rest and retirement from
Paris his health had greatly benefited.
It is a very different picture we get of the once brilliant Jacqueline.
If her father had cherished any hopes of restoring her again to the
world, he was destined to disappointment. With her conversion at Rouen,
and her association with M. Singlin and Port Royal, her old life seems
entirely to have died out. Even her old pleasure in making verses was
renounced at the bidding of Port Royal. She was told “that it was a
talent of which God would not take any account—it was necessary to bury
it,” and this although she only exerted it now in the service of religion
and the Church. While Madame Périer has given us no details, and,
indeed, no facts whatever, of her brother’s life at this time, she has
given us a minute picture of Jacqueline’s austerities. In everything
save in name she had already become a nun. She wore a dress approaching
as nearly as possible to a religious habit; she fasted and kept vigils;
she spent her whole time either in the house alone, absorbed in religious
ecstasy, or abroad in works of active charity; in every way she made it
plainly to be known that it was only her father’s wish that kept her in
the world at all.
After a stay in Auvergne of seventeen months, the family returned to
Paris in November 1650. There we still read of the pious labours and
devotion of Jacqueline—little or nothing of her brother. How far the
leisure of country life may have weaned him from his old pursuits, how
far the world had begun to exercise a new attraction over him, we learn
nothing. It is evident from his letter to M. Périer on his father’s
death, nearly a year after this, that he still cherished strongly his
religious convictions. Yet there is nothing in all this time to tell of
his religious profession; and Madame Périer plainly does not care to
dwell upon it, but hurries forward to the later and more edifying period
of his career. The impression is left upon us that worldly distractions
had already begun to influence his life.
These distractions rapidly acquired force after the father’s death in the
autumn of 1651 (September). The devoted Jacqueline attended his last
moments with assiduous tenderness; but no sooner was the event over than
she renewed her determination to enter Port Royal. The issue cannot be
so well described as in Madame Périer’s words:—
“Being ill,” she says, “I was unable to leave Paris till the end of
November. In this interval, my brother, who was greatly afflicted,
and had received much consolation from my sister, imagined that her
affection would make her remain with him at least a year. . . . He
spoke to her on the subject, but in such a manner as to convey the
impression that she would not so far contradict him for fear of
redoubling his grief. This led her to dissemble her intention till
our arrival. Then she told me that her resolution was fixed to adopt
a religious life as soon as our respective shares [of the father’s
property] were arranged. She would, however, spare my brother by
leading him to suppose she only meditated a retreat! With this view,
she disposed of everything in my presence; our shares were settled on
the last day of December; and she fixed upon the 4th of January for
carrying out her decision. On the evening before, she begged me to
say something to my brother, that he might not be taken by surprise.
I did so with all the precaution I could; but although I hinted that
it was only a retreat, with the view of knowing something of the sort
of life, he did not fail to be deeply touched. He withdrew very sad
to his chamber without seeing my sister, who was then in a small
cabinet where she was accustomed to retire for prayer. She did not
come out till my brother had left, as she feared his look would go to
her heart. I told her for him what words of tenderness he had
spoken; and after that we both retired. Though I consented with all
my heart to what my sister was doing, because I thought it was for
her the highest good, the greatness of her resolution astonished and
occupied my mind so that I could not sleep all night. At seven
o’clock, when I saw that my sister was not up, I concluded that she
was no longer sleeping, and feared that she might be ill.
Accordingly, I went to her bed, where I found her still fast asleep.
The noise I made awoke her; she asked me what o’clock it was. I told
her; and having inquired how she was, and if she had slept well, she
said she was very well, and that she had slept excellently. So she
rose, dressed, and went away, doing this, as everything else, with a
tranquillity and equanimity inconceivable. We said no adieu for fear
of breaking down. I only turned aside when I saw her ready to go.
In this manner she quitted the world on the 4th January 1652, being
then exactly twenty-six years and three months old.” {58}
Our readers will not grudge this extract, so touching in its simplicity.
What a living picture does it give us of this remarkable family!—the
elder sister’s wakeful anxiety—the younger’s calm determination—the
brother’s half-suppressed yet deeply-moved tenderness—the proud and
sensitive reserve of all the three. Jacqueline’s firmness was heroic,
but her heart was full of concern. She had escaped the
half-authoritative, half-supplicating entreaties of her brother, and
found refuge for her long-cherished solicitudes of heart in the bosom of
Port Royal, and the strong counsels both of the Mère Angélique and the
Mère Agnès. But after a while this did not satisfy her. When the time
came to make her profession, she was anxious to do so, not merely with
her own consent, but with her brother’s. And accordingly, she addressed
him in the following March a remarkable letter, in which, while reminding
him that she was her own mistress to do as she wished in a matter so
seriously affecting her life, she yet prayed him to give her a kindly
greeting in her solemn act, and to come to the ceremony of her taking the
vows. The letter breathes at once the affection of a sister and the
passion of a saint,—the proud firmness so characteristic of the family,
with a charming sweetness, blending entreaty with command. She signs
herself already “Sister of Sainte Euphémie,” the name which she adopted
as an inmate of Port Royal, addressing her brother for the most part with
the grave formal “you,” but now and then relapsing into the old familiar
“thou,” as if she were still in the family home.
“Do not take that away,” she says, {59} “which you cannot give. If
it is true that the world has preserved some impressions of the
friendship which it showed for me when I was with it, please God this
should not turn me from quitting it, nor you from consenting to my
doing so. This ought rather to be my glory, and your joy, and that
of all my true friends, as showing the strength of my God, and that
it is not the world which quits me, but I that quit the world, and
that the effort which it makes to retain me is to be regarded as only
a visible punishment of the complacency with which I formerly
regarded it, and which it now pleases God to give me power to resist.
. . . Do not hinder those who do well; and do well yourself; or if
you have not the strength to follow me, at least do not hold me back.
Do not render me ungrateful to God for the grace which He has given
to one whom you love. . . . I wait this proof of your brotherly
friendship, and pray you to come to my divine betrothal, which will
take place, God helping, on Trinity Sunday. I wrote also to my
faithful one [her sister Gilberte]. I beg you to console her, if
there is need, and encourage her. It is only for the sake of form
that I ask you to be present at the ceremony; for I do not believe
you have any thought of failing me. Be assured that I must renounce
you if you do.”
The result of this moving appeal was to bring her brother to her side.
“He came the following day very much put out,” she says, “with a bad
headache, the result of my letter, yet also very much softened, for
instead of the two years which he had formerly insisted on, he wished
me merely to wait till All Saints’ Day. But seeing me firm not to
delay, yet willing to give him some further time to think over the
matter, he melted entirely, and expressed pity for the trouble which
had made me delay so long a result which I had so long and so
ardently desired. He did not return at the appointed time; but M.
d’Andilly, at my request, had the goodness to send for him on
Saturday, and undertook the matter with so much warmth, and yet
skill, that he consented to everything we wished.” {60}
Jacqueline gained her point so far; but painful difficulties still
remained, the story of which she herself has also told us. {61} While
eager to be admitted to the full privileges of her vocation, she did not
wish to enter Port Royal empty-handed. She thought herself free to endow
it with the share of her father’s fortune which had fallen to her, and
seems not to have doubted her brother’s and sister’s concurrence in this
act of liberality. But they, on the contrary, were both for a time
deeply offended that she should apparently prefer strangers to her own
kindred. They took the matter “in an entirely secular manner.” This
greatly grieved her in turn; and, balked at once in her wishes and her
sisterly trust, she pictures in the most lively colours the distress she
endured. La Mère Agnès consoled her in her disappointment, and sought to
carry her thoughts beyond the mere chagrin which so obviously mingled
with her higher feeling. Her own somewhat resentful obstinacy gradually
yielded to the pure passivity of resignation—so strong in its seeming
weakness—which the sister of Arnauld preached to her. At length she is
content to make no further demands upon her brother. He and Madame
Périer shall do as they wish; the money would not be blessed unless it
came from free hearts, and was given for the love of God. She is willing
even to be received gratuitously as a sister—a feeling evidently not
without its bitterness. Her submission became, as may be guessed, her
triumph; a result probably not unforeseen by the deeper experience of La
Mère Agnès and M. Singlin.
When her brother—“he who had most interest in the affair”—at last came to
see her, she endeavoured to meet him as the Mother advised. “But, with
all her effort” she could not hide the sadness of her heart.
“This,” she says, “was so unlike my usual manner, that he perceived
it at once; and there was no need of an interpreter to explain the
cause, for though I put on the best face I could, he easily guessed
that it was his own conduct which was the cause of my uneasiness.
All the same, he was desirous of making the first complaint; and then
I learned that both he and my sister felt themselves much aggrieved
by what I had written. He dwelt on this, but could hardly go on,
seeing I made no complaint on my side. Otherwise, I could have
destroyed by a single word all his reasons!”
A true family trait! The result of all was, that Pascal yielded to the
tender resignation of his sister what he had refused to her arguments.
He was so “touched,” she says, “with confusion, that he resolved to put
the whole affair in order,” and to undertake himself any risks or charges
that it might involve.
But the heads of the House required to be satisfied, no less than
Jacqueline. They were not disposed to accept any gift which was not
freely and piously given. Accordingly, before the final disposition of
the property was made, La Mère Angélique took care that Pascal should
understand the matter anew from the Port-Royalist point of view. St
Cyran had taught them that they were never “to receive anything for the
house of God but that which came from God.” Even he was not a little
surprised, according to the statement of his sister, at all this
scrupulousness—“the manner in which we deal with such matters;” and the
men of business whose presence was necessary on the occasion are
represented as astonished beyond measure. “They had never seen business
done in such a way.” At length, however, all was completed. Pascal
professed the genuineness of his motives, and only regretted that it was
not in his power to do more.
If this narrative mainly concerns Jacqueline Pascal, it serves to throw
light upon the character and life of her brother at this time. In the
course of her “relation,” Jacqueline, or her interlocutor La Mère Agnès,
makes frequent allusion to Pascal’s “worldly life.” When she is vexed
that he will not carry out her desires in the matter of the dowry, she is
reminded that she had far more reason to be distressed by the “faults and
infidelities” into which he had fallen towards God. {63a} He is
represented as being so much engrossed with the vanities and amusements
of the world as to prefer his own pleasure and advantage to the good of a
religious community or the pious gratification of his sister. It was
only by some miracle that it could be otherwise; and there was no reason
to “expect a miracle of grace in a person like him.” {63b} All the means
at his command were hardly sufficient to enable him to live in the world
“like others of his condition,” and the associates with whom he was known
to be mingling. {63c}
Plainly at this time Pascal was abandoned by Port Royal. He had “set
himself,” as his sister briefly says, “on the world.” As his niece more
particularly indicates, {63d} he had given himself up to the amusements
of life. Unable to study, the love of leisure and of fashionable society
had gradually gained upon him. At first he was moderate in his worldly
enjoyments; but a taste for them insensibly sprang up and carried him far
away from his old associations and the pious severities of his former
life. After his father’s death this change was more clearly marked. He
was master of his own affairs, and he plunged more freely into the
pleasures of society, although always, it is distinctly said, “without
any vice or licentiousness.” All this, his niece adds, was very grievous
to her aunt Jacqueline, who grieved in spirit at seeing him who had been
the means of making her learn the nothingness of the world return to its
vanities.
Too much is not to be made of such statements, or the still stronger
expressions of Jacqueline herself in her letters regarding her brother’s
final conversion. When she speaks of “wretched attachments” binding him
to the world, and of his being still “haunted by the smell of the mud
which he had embraced with such _empressement_,” {64} we are to remember
that she speaks not only out of the severity of her own youthful
judgment, (and what judgment is so severe at times as that of youth?) but
out of the mouth of Port Royal. She condemns a world which was no doubt
bad enough, but of which she knew nothing. Her allusions to the
“grandeur” of her brother’s life and similar indications have led
Sainte-Beuve and others to speak of his extravagance at this time. He is
supposed not only to have lived in the world, but to have lived in a
style above his means—the companion of men of higher social position than
himself, profuse in their habits and expenditure. That he lived in the
midst of society of this kind can hardly be doubted. It is more doubtful
how far his own habits had become those of an extravagant man of the
world. His chief companion was one who remained bound to him through all
the rest of his life, Pascal’s influence having drawn him also from the
world when the time of his own change came. This was the Duc de Roannez,
a young man of fewer years than himself, who seems to have possessed many
attractive qualities. He was devoted to Pascal—could hardly “bear him
out of his sight,” as Marguerite Périer says—and Pascal warmly returned
his friendship. It seems as if they had lived together a good deal, or
at least that Pascal spent the most of his time with the young Duke; and
it was in his house and society no doubt that he tasted the joys and
perils of that fashionable and luxurious life of which his sister speaks
so bitterly. {65a} It was a life, after all, of thoughtless enjoyment
rather than of any deeper folly. Both men were as yet very young—the
Duke only twenty-two years of age, and Pascal twenty-eight. After his
simple and severe training, and the society of his Jansenist friends, it
must have been a change full of excitement, possibly of moral danger, to
the once enthusiastic student; for the society of the time was charged
with the elements both of sceptical and moral indifference. It has been
even said that “no society was ever more grandly dissolute” than that of
the Fronde, “when women like La Barette {65b} and La Couronne took the
lead in the least discreet pleasures.”
Among the men whom Pascal evidently met at the hotel of the Duc de
Roannez, and with whom he formed something of a friendship, was the
well-known Chevalier de Méré, whom we know best as a tutor of Madame de
Maintenon, and whose graceful but flippant letters still survive as a
picture of the time. He was a gambler and libertine, yet with some
tincture of science and professed interest in its progress. In his
correspondence there is a letter to Pascal, in which he makes free in a
somewhat ridiculous manner with the young geometrician already so
distinguished. Other names still less reputable—those of Miton and
Desbarreaux, for example—have been associated with Pascal during this
period. Miton was undoubtedly an intimate ally of De Méré, and amidst
all his dissoluteness, made pretensions to scientific knowledge and
attainments as a writer. Desbarreaux was a companion of both, but of a
still lower grade—a man of open profligacy, and a despiser of the rites
of the Church. Along with Miton and other boon companions, he is spoken
of as betaking himself to St Cloud for carnival during the Holy Week.
{66} The truth would seem to be that all these men came across Pascal’s
path at this time, and were more or less known to him. His allusions to
both Miton and Desbarreaux in the Pensées imply this. There is a certain
familiarity of knowledge indicated in the very heartiness with which he
assails them—speaking of Miton as “hateful,” {67a} and of Desbarreaux as
having renounced reason and made himself a “brute.” {67b} But it is
against all probability, no less than against all the facts known to us,
to suppose that Pascal had more connection with such men than meeting
them in the society in which he moved during these years, and becoming
well acquainted with the intellectual and moral atmosphere which they
breathed. It may be too much to say, with Faugère, that he was then
consciously imbibing the experience to be afterwards utilised in his
great work, or that it was the principles professed by these men which
gave him the first idea of such a work; but we may certainly say that the
knowledge of them, as well as all the knowledge he acquired at this time,
served to deepen and extend his moral intuitions, and to give a finer
point to many of his Thoughts. And no student of Pascal can doubt that
“if his feet touched for a moment the dirt of this dissolute society, his
divine wings remained unsoiled.” {67c}
A more interesting point than any, however, still remains in connection
with this period of his life. It was now, or soon after, that Pascal
must have composed the “Discours sur les Passions de l’Amour,” one of the
most exquisite fragments which have come from his pen,—remarkable both in
itself and in the circumstances of its discovery by M. Cousin about
thirty years ago. M. Cousin has himself related these circumstances in
minute detail, and with a certain self-elation. {67d} According to M.
Faugère, there was no particular difficulty, and therefore no particular
merit, in the discovery. The fragment was clearly indexed in a catalogue
of the Pascal MSS. in the well-known State library of Paris as follows:
“Discours sur les Passions de l’Amour, par M. Pascal,” and again in the
body of the volume the fragment was entitled, “Discours, etc., on
l’attribue à M. Pascal.” The genuineness of the fragment seems admitted
on all hands. “In the first line,” says Cousin, “I felt Pascal, and my
conviction of its authorship grew as I proceeded—his ardent and lofty
manner, half thought, half passion, and that speech so fine and grand, an
accent which I would recognise amongst a thousand.” {68a} “The soul and
thought of Pascal,” says Faugère, “shine everywhere in the pages, steeped
in a melancholy at once chaste and ardent.” {68b}
The following extracts may give some idea of this remarkable paper. It
commences in an abstract, aphoristic manner not uncommon with Pascal:—
“Man is born to think; he is never a moment without thinking. But
pure thought, which, if it could be sustained, would make him happy,
fatigues and prostrates him. He could not live a life of mere
thought; movement and action are necessary to him. He must be
agitated by the passions, whose sources he feels deep and strong in
his heart. The passions most characteristic of man, and which
embrace most others, are love and ambition. They have no affinity,
yet they are often united; together, they tend to weaken if not
destroy each other. For however grand the human spirit, it is only
capable at once of one great passion. When love and ambition meet,
each therefore falls short of what it would otherwise be. Age
determines neither the beginning nor the end of these two passions.
They are born with the first years, they continue often to the last.”
“Man finds no full scope for love in himself, yet he loves. It is
necessary, therefore, for him to seek an object of love elsewhere.
This he can only find in beauty. But as he himself is the most
beautiful creature that God has made, he must find in himself the
type of that beauty which he seeks elsewhere. This defines and
embodies itself in the difference of sex. A woman is the highest
form of beauty. Endowed with mind, she is its living and marvellous
personation. If a beautiful woman wishes to please, she will always
succeed. The fascinations of beauty in such a case never fail to
captivate, whatever man may do to resist them. There is a spot in
every heart which they reach.”
“Love is of no age; it is always being born. The poets tell us so,
and hence we represent it as a child. It creates intelligence, and
feeds upon intelligence. . . . We exhaust our power of gratifying it
every day, and yet every day it is necessary to renew its
gratification.”
“Man in solitude is an incomplete being; he needs companionship for
happiness. He seeks this commonly in a like condition with his own,
because habits of desire and opportunity in such a case are most
readily found by him. But _sometimes he fixes his affections on an
object far beyond his rank_, and the flame burns the more intensely
that he is forced to conceal it in his own bosom. When we love one
of elevated condition, ambition may at first coexist with affection.
But love soon becomes the master. It is a tyrant which suffers no
rival; it must reign alone. Every other emotion must subserve and
obey its dictates. A high attachment fills the heart more completely
than a common and equal one. Small things are carried away in the
great capacity of love.”
“The pleasure of loving, without daring to say anything of one’s
love, has its pains, but also its sweetnesses. With what transport
do we regulate all our actions with the view of pleasing one whom we
infinitely value! . . . The fulness of love sometimes languishes,
receiving no succour from the beloved object. Then we fall into
misery; and hostile passions, lying in wait for the heart, tear it in
a thousand pieces. But anon a ray of hope—the very least it may
be—raises us as high as ever. Sometimes this comes from mere
dalliance, but sometimes also from an honest pity. How happy such a
moment when it comes!”
“The first effect of love is to inspire a great respect. We revere
whom we really love. This is right, and we know nothing in the world
so grand as this. . . . In love we forget fortune, parents, friends,
and the reason of this is that we imagine we need nothing else than
the object of our love. The heart is full; there is no room for care
nor disquietude. Passion is then necessarily in excess; there is a
plenitude in it which resists the commencement of reflection. Yet
love and reason are not to be opposed, and love has always reason
with it, although it implies a precipitation of thought which carries
us away without due examination. Otherwise we should be very
disagreeable machines. Do not exclude reason from love, therefore;
they are truly inseparable. The poets are wrong in representing love
as blind. It is necessary to take away his veil, and give him
henceforth the joy of sight.”
“It is not merely the result of custom, but a dictate of nature, that
man should make the first advances in love. . . . Great souls
require an inundation of passion to disturb and fill them; but when
they begin to love, they love supremely. . . . When we are away from
the object of our love we resolve to do and say many things, but when
we are present we hesitate. The explanation is, that at a distance
the reason is undisturbed, but in presence of the beloved object it
is strangely moved. In love we fear to hazard lest we lose all. It
is necessary to advance, yet who can tell to what point? We tremble
always till we reach this point, and yet prudence does not help us to
keep it when we have found it. . . . There is nothing so
embarrassing as to be in love, and see something in our favour
without daring to believe in it. Hope and fear rage within us, and
the last too often triumphs.”
The question arises, What interpretation are we to put on these chaste
yet glowing sentences? It seems hardly possible to believe that they
were not penned out of some real experience. Pascal was not the man to
busy himself in writing an imaginary essay on such a subject. Nothing
can be conceived less like the sketch of a mere moral analyst standing
outside the passion he describes. There may be a tendency here and there
to over-analysis, and to the balancing of antitheses now on one side and
now on the other; but there is the breath of true passion all through the
piece, and touching, as with fire, many of its many fine utterances. Who
was then, conceivably, the object of Pascal’s affections? We have it on
the authority of his niece that at this time, when he lived so much as
the companion of the Duc de Roannez, he contemplated marrying and
settling in the world. {71} This, and the indications of the piece
itself, have led to the conjecture that he was in love with the sister of
his friend. Charlotte Gouffier de Roannez was then about sixteen years
of age, endowed with captivating graces of form and manner, animated by a
sweet intelligence and by that charm of spiritual sympathy so likely to
prove attractive to a man like Pascal. Occupying rooms in the house of
his friend, who, we have seen, could not bear him out of his sight,
Pascal and Mademoiselle de Roannez were necessarily much in each other’s
society. What so natural as that he should fall in love, and overlooking
all disparity of rank, cherish the secret hope of a union with one so
gifted and beautiful?—or why may not ambition have mingled with his love,
as he himself implies, and carried him for a time into a dreamland from
which all shadows fell away?
It is impossible to do more than form conjectures in such a matter. To
M. Faugère nothing seems more probable. M. Cousin resents the
supposition as derogatory to Pascal, and as utterly inconsistent with the
usages of the age of Louis XIV. But even were it impossible, according
to the usages of the time, that Pascal should have ever married
Mademoiselle de Roannez, this is no proof that he may not have fallen in
love with her. There is much in this paper that favours the idea, that
while Pascal loved deeply he yet never told his love; and the social
obstacles, which for a time may have seemed to him surmountable, at last
may have shut out all hope from his heart. Many causes might unite to do
this, even supposing his love was returned. It is certain that he
continued the warm friend, not only of the Duc de Roannez, but of his
sister; and in after-years a correspondence was established betwixt them
implying the highest degree of mutual esteem and confidence. We have
only the letters of Pascal; nothing is known of those of Mademoiselle de
Roannez; the rigidity of the Jansenist copyists have given us only
extracts even of the former. All trace of earthly passion, if it ever
existed, has gone from the pious page in which the Jansenist saint sets
forth his exhortations. Yet it argues no common interest, that Pascal
should pause in the midst of his conflict with the Jesuits to advise and
direct his former companion; and Faugère professes that even before he
had read the ‘Discours’ he could trace a “tender solicitude”—more than
the mere impulse of Christian charity—beneath all the grave severity of
his religious phrases.
The fate of Mademoiselle de Roannez was not a happy one. After
vacillating for some time between the cloister and the world—obeying the
guidance of Pascal, either directly or through Madame Périer, and even
passing through her novitiate at Port Royal with “extraordinary
fervour”—she was persuaded to marry and become the Duchesse de la
Feuillade. But her marriage proved unfortunate. Her children died
young; her own health broke down; she herself at length died under an
operation, bequeathing a legacy to Port Royal, which had remained
entwined with all dearest associations. Whether Pascal and she had loved
each other or not, this sacred Home bound their best thoughts together,
and serves to recall their highest aspirations.
It falls to us now to describe how Port Royal claimed the heart of
Pascal, and called forth the chief activities of his remaining years.